lectual phase is abbreviated away.
Habits are once voluntary and deliberated actions becoming
mechanical in this way, and slipping out of the sphere of mind. For
instance, many of the detailed movements of writing and walking
are performed without any attention to the details. An excessive
concentration of the attention upon one thing leads to
absent-mindedness, and to its consequent absurdities of
inappropriate, because imperfectly acquired, reflexes.

Section 108. This fluctuating scope of mind should be remembered,
more especially when we are considering the probable mental states
of the lower animals. An habitual or reflex action may have all the
outward appearance of deliberate adjustment. We cannot tell in any
particular case how far the mental comes in, or whether it comes in at
all. Seeing that in our own case consciousness does not enter
into our commonest and most necessary actions, into breathing and
digestion, for instance, and scarcely at all in the details of such acts
as walking and talking we might infer that nature was economical in
its use, and that in the case of such an animal as the Rabbit, which
follows a very limited routine, and in which scarcely any versatility in
emergencies is evident, it must be relatively inconsiderable. Perhaps
after all, pain is not scattered so needlessly and lavishly throughout
the world as the enemies of the vivisectionist would have us believe.

7. _The Nervous System_

Section 109. A little more attention must now be given to the
detailed anatomy of the peripheral and central nerve ends. A nerve, as
we have pointed out, terminates centrally in some ganglion cell, either
in a ganglion or in the spinal cord or brain; peripherally there is a
much greater variety of ending. We may have tactile (touch) ends
of various kinds, and the similar olfactory and gustatory end organs;
or the nerve may conduct efferent impressions, and terminate in a
gland which it excites to secretion, in a muscle end-plate, or in fact,
anywhere, where kataboly can be set going and energy disengaged.
We may now briefly advert to the receptive nerve ends.

Section 110. Many sensory nerves, doubtless, terminate in fine ends
among the tissues. There are also special touch corpuscles, ovoid
bodies, around which a nerve twines, or within which it terminates.

Section 111. The eye (Figure 8) has a tough, dense, outer coat, the
sclerotic (sc.), within which is a highly vascular and internal